Brando in a file photo addressing the audience during Michael Jackson's '30th Anniversary Celebration, The Solo Years' concert, September 7, 2001 in New York's Madison Square Garden. - Reuters
LOS ANGELES, AP:
MARLON BRANDO, who revolutionised Hollywood's image of a leading man playing street-tough, emotionally raw characters in A Streetcar Named Desire and On The Waterfront and then revived his career a generation later as the definitive Mafia don in The Godfather, died at 80.
The reclusive Brando died of lung failure at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at UCLA Medical Center, California, according to hospital spokeswoman Roxanne Moster.
"Marlon would hate the idea of people chiming in to give their comments about his death. All I'll say is that it makes me sad he's gone," The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola said yesterday.
Brando's attorney, David J. Seeley, said funeral arrangements would be private.
UNFORGETTABLE
For generations of movie lovers, Brando was unforgettable as the embodiment of brutish Stanley Kowalski in 1951's A Streetcar Named Desire, famously bellowing "STELLA!" at his estranged love with a mix of anguish and desire.
Then came his mixed-up, washed-up boxer Terry Malloy of 1954's On The Waterfront, who laments throwing fights for his gangster brother with the line, "I coulda been a contender... I coulda been somebody..."
Brando's personally combative nature only increased as he grew older. It might best be defined by his line from 1953's The Wild One, in which Brando, playing a motorcycle gang leader, was asked what he was rebelling against.
A REBELLIOUS FILM ICON
"Whattaya got?" was his character's reply.
While his early roles were marked by an overt, almost predatory, sexuality that made him a rebellious film icon, Brando let his good looks fade as he gained weight and became increasingly reclusive in later years.
He was pushy, difficult, temperamental and demanding "and his preference for repeated takes came to be regarded as excessive and costly."
Even though the studios had written off the star in the early 1970s, he went on to create the iconic character of Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather, which reinvigorated his career and earned him his second best-actor Oscar.
Brando's private life was tumultuous. His three wives were all pregnant when they married him. He fathered at least nine children.
His family life turned tragic with his son's conviction for killing the boyfriend of his half-sister, Cheyenne Brando, in 1990. Five years later, Cheyenne committed suicide, never having gotten over her depression and the killing.
Marlon Brando Jr. came from the American heartland, born in Omaha, Neb., on April 3, 1924. Nicknamed "Bud" to distinguish him from his father, Brando and his family moved around the country throughout his youth. He was constantly being reprimanded for misbehavior at school, and had a talent for playacting, both in elaborate pranks and in plays and recitations.
After getting expelled from military school, Brando at 19 moved to New York and stayed with his sister Frances, an art student.
He took up the study of acting in the city, and appeared in such plays as "I Remember Mama," and "Truckline Cafe." The latter was directed by Elia Kazan, who would hire him for the play "A Streetcar Named Desire" in 1947 and later the movie.
The Tennessee Williams play made Brando famous, but the actor was uncomfortable with the attention. He hated the clamor of fans and suffered through interviews. At the end of his two-year contract for "Streetcar" he never appeared in another play.
Although he remained in Hollywood, he refused to be part of it.
"Hollywood is ruled by fear and love of money," he once said. "But it can't rule me because I'm not afraid of anything and I don't love money."
